Category Health/Medical

UT Southwestern researchers have helped reveal the molecular structure of alpha Klotho (a-Klotho), the so-called “anti-aging” protein

Researchers reveal the molecular structure of the so-called ‘anti-aging’ protein alpha Klotho (a-Klotho) and how it transmits a hormonal signal that controls a variety of biologic processes. Studies at UTSW two decades ago by Dr. Makoto Kuro-o, Professor of Pathology, demonstrated that mice lacking either a-Klotho or the hormone FGF23 suffered from premature and multiple organ failure as well as other conditions, including early onset cardiovascular disease, cancer, and cognitive decline...

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin may have discovered a way to switch off inflammation(Credit: Ugreen/Depositphotos)

Scientists have discovered a new metabolic process in the body that can switch off inflammation. They have discovered that ‘itaconate’ – a molecule derived from glucose – acts as a powerful off-switch for macrophages, which are the cells in the immune system that lie at the heart of many inflammatory diseases including arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and heart disease...

Healthy cells (left image) display four centrioles, a normal number (in yellow). On the contrary, breast cancer cells (triple negative) have extra centrioles (here 16, right image). Credit: Gaëlle Marteil, IGC.

A research team led by Monica Bettencourt Dias, from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC, Portugal), discovered important features of cancer cells that may help clinicians fighting cancer. The researchers observed that the number and size of tiny structures that exist inside cells, called centrioles, are increased in the most aggressive sub-types of cancer. This study will be published in Nature Communications* on the 28th of March.

Cancer is a very diverse disease with some tumours being more aggressive and more resistant to chemotherapy than others...

PrintrBot Simple Metal modified with the LVE for FRESH printing. Credit: Adam Feinberg/HardwareX

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a low-cost 3D bioprinter by modifying a standard desktop 3D printer, and they have released the breakthrough designs as open source so that anyone can build their own system. The researchers – Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Biomedical Engineering (BME) Associate Professor Adam Feinberg, BME postdoctoral fellow TJ Hinton, and Kira Pusch, a recent graduate of the MSE undergraduate program – recently published a paper in the journal HardwareX that contains complete instructions for printing and installing the syringe-based, large volume extruder (LVE) to modify any typical, commercial plastic printer.

“What we’ve created,” says ...